T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA The newly built Ohio State University Extension building provides agricultural education for Belmont County residents.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — As the Belmont County Fair celebrates its 175th year, it’s a good time to look back to 2010 when it moved to its “new” site.

The fair left the fairgrounds adjacent to St. Clairsville High School in 2010, headed to a home that would allow the fair to continue to grow with virtually unlimited space. Before moving to that location, the fair was operating on 17 acres – sharing space with the high school and featuring an annual “fair game” football contest between St. Clairsville and Union Local.

“We were crammed, and we shared everything with the St. Clairsville school as far as half of the football field was agricultural society’s and the other half was the football team,” Belmont County Fair Board President Ed Campbell said. “We worked with each other to get everything done, but it was real tight and we didn’t have room for expansion.”

The current location consists of 162 acres that continue to give the fair the room it needs to expand. With the physical growth, the fair was able to bring back fan favorites such as truck and tractor pulls as well as adding motocross racing as an attraction.

The Belmont County Fairgrounds has continued to grow rapidly every year.

“We just poured 19,500 square feet of concrete,” Campbell said.

This year alone, the fairground has welcomed a new Ohio State University Extension building as well as a new building for the Belmont County Soil and Water Conservation District. The OSU Extension building provides several agricultural programs for the youth of Belmont County. The building also offers several health and mental health education programs.

“So by bringing those two offices here onto the fairgrounds, we’re able to actually have offices that house the hub of the agricultural information for the county,” fair board Director Debi Ault said.

Ault has been a board member for more than three decades, and in that span she’s noticed several drastic changes in the fair.

“There’s certainly not as many agricultural farms in Belmont County as there once was, but we still strive to give as much education to the public about what all is involved in agriculture. Agricultural education is the focus of our fair. It’s to showcase the youth of Belmont County who are in 4-H, Future Farmers of America, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and all of those youth organizations,” Ault said. “As those things change, we have to change and adapt as well.”

Belmont County Fair Board Grounds Superintendent Greg Mehlman has been a board member for 38 years. He said that when the fair was moved to the current site that the board set up the layout to be able to expand and has continued to add buildings every single year since it was moved in 2010.

“That first year we may have had two buildings at the most. We had to operate out of tents until we were able to add buildings over the years,” Mehlman recalled when speaking about the inaugural fair at the current location.

He said that the show arena was the first building the board built solely for the fair.

“We took the trusses out of the old beef barn and hauled them out there. We used them to build the main show arena,” Mehlman said.

In the 14 years since changing locations, the fair board has added 13 other buildings to the grounds and plans to continue to grow.